Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday October 31, 2011 @04:05PM
from the enjoy-your-goosebumps dept.

sciencehabit writes "Some sounds are excruciating. Take fingernails squeaking on a chalkboard. The noise makes many people shudder, but researchers never knew exactly why. A new study finds that there are two factors at work: the knowledge of where the sound is coming from and the unfortunate design of our ear canals. 'The offending frequencies were in the range of 2000 to 4000 Hz. Removing those made the sounds much easier to listen to. Deleting the tonal parts of the sound entirely also made listeners perceive the sound as more pleasant, whereas removing other frequencies or the noisy, scraping parts of the sound made little difference.'"

Exactly the same for me! "Fingernails on a chalkboard" kinds of sounds never bothered me in the slightest. But if I'm the one scraping silverware on a plate, it makes me shudder exactly like other people do when hearing fingernails on a chalkboard! It's weird, maybe my sense of whatever causes the shuddering is slightly "shifted" compared to a normal person.

Stravinsky was at a formal dinner of some sort, and asked the diner next to him "do you know how to make a violin section do this?" and scraped his fork across his plate with a horrible screech. When the fellow diner cringed, Stravinsky smiled, and said "I do."

You know I never thought anyone else was annoyed by the glug glug sound of liquid pouring. We should create a support group so that all of us that are thus afflicted can come out and let the world know that we hate that sound.

The texture of that unrefined pulpy cardboard that McDonald's drink trays are made of. Feeling that stuff against my fingertips just makes my skin crawl. Styrofoam and chalkboards don't bug me at all.

Sort of related, I can't stand the feeling of wooden popsicle sticks against my teeth. Certain paper products have the same effect. It's hard to finish a popsicle--it has to be very tasty for me to take that last lick. Funny, even just the thought of the feeling is only slightly less pleasant....Gotta go, I'm going to be sick.

Communism, like Capitalism: I am not actually aware of anywhere which have attempted to implement these pure concepts.Everywhere tends to end up implementing an ad-hoc mish-mash of all three... in varying degrees and proportions.

To go completely off-topic:Places that historically have been capitalism-based have tended to be generally quite free, and prosperous. Places that have shot for communism have tended to end up as authoritarian, murderous nightmares. The one possible counter-example I can think of, is what China may look like in 20 years-- and mostly because they are shedding so much of the communist vestiges and aiming at hyper-capitalism right now (though they are retaining the authoritarian nature).

True, but have you considered reverse causation? 'Places whose culture is of authoritarian murderous nightmares tend to end up with extreme political systems'. Communism is indeed one of those, but think also Mexico, Cambodia, Burma, Saudi...

Hutterites have been living in a society of common ownership for over a century and they appear to be functioning fine. Evidently something about their society (probably religious ties, or could be the limits on colony size) allows it to work where it failed for the Jamestown bunch.

If you choose to live in common ownership isn't it still, basically, capitalism? In that type of opt-in system you still have to choose to give "your" private property to the group.

Actually, I can think of a much more prevalent example, most married couples. My wife and I life in a state of common ownership between two people. But we still have private property, we choose to live in this state.

I agree with you. Fingernails on chalkboard never bothered me and they still don't. I have excellent audio reception btw so it's not a question of being tone-deaf. I hear the sounds but my skin doesn't crawl up.

On a related note, I moved from a place with no skunks to a place teeming with them. To the locals, the odour is unbearable and they have like a flight-response to it. Personally, I don't abhor the smell; It's akin to "burning rubber". When my mother visited, it reminded her of the smell of "roasting

On a related note, I moved from a place with no skunks to a place teeming with them. To the locals, the odour is unbearable and they have like a flight-response to it.

I have seen another distinct entry for your list of reactions. Potheads apparently love the smell. As a non-pothead who grew up in skunk country, it's pretty funny to see people who can't get enough of that vile aroma. Gross!

Some of the ingredients in our everyday lives are better off unknown. Take carmine for example... the red coloring used for many things, such as red velvet cake... it's made of crushed insects.

I just can't fathom a perfume or cologne using skunk smell, but I'm sure some enterprising perfume scientist (whatever they are called) has tried it at some point in history. Might as well toss some deer urine in there for good measure, I guess? Mayb

Perhaps the odor varies from location to location due to diet or other envrionmental conditions, and possibly by the distance from the point of origin. You should thus perform an experiment for our edification:

Acquire the appropriate eye protection and a sufficient supply of clothing to replace the ruined clothing you will be burning.

Travel to each state and province in North America where skunks are naturally found. Optionally, include locations on other continents.

Isn't that just learning? You have not yet directly experienced skunk spray, so it doesn't have the same effect on you as someone who has experienced it. The area I have always lived in has a lot of skunks. Like you, the smell never bothered me all that much. Then one day our cat got sprayed, and before we knew it he was in the house. Now I absolutely can not stand that smell, no matter how far off it is.

Isn't that just learning? You have not yet directly experienced skunk spray, so it doesn't have the same effect on you as someone who has experienced it. The area I have always lived in has a lot of skunks. Like you, the smell never bothered me all that much. Then one day our cat got sprayed, and before we knew it he was in the house. Now I absolutely can not stand that smell, no matter how far off it is.

People who've never lived in areas with a lot of skunks seldom appreciate just how potent and horrendous

This. One time a skunk sprayed underneath the cabin my family was staying in. It was in the middle of the night, and woke all of us up. We searched the whole place, afraid an appliance was burning out or something It was an awful chemical plastic burning smell that was nothing like the "skunky" whiff you get passing one on the road.

My dog got sprayed once, directly in the face, and he ran into the house and we had to give him a bath for hours.The smell was just a stronger version of what you normally smell when a skunk has sprayed "somewhere" nearby.It wasn't horrendous at all (I've posted already that I find it pleasant and peppery). Just more of the same.

Interesting. I wonder if you might be lacking (or have extra?) receptors that detect the rancid part of the smell or bind to a different part of the oil? It might be worth researchi

I have this great book of marine charts for the Puget Sound which places historical anecdotes in place context.

There is one entry from early European explorers, which indicates that one of the men chased down a skunk having never seen such an animal before. It continues to note that the stench was unbearable, that no amount of boiling would remove it from the clothes, and that in the end, the skunk hunters were forced to destroy their clothing.

June 10, 1792
Vancouver survey party in this area [points to William Point on Samish Island (*) [google.com]] Puget relates... "An animal called a Skunk was run down by one of the marines after Dark & the intolerable stench it created absolutely awakened us in the tent. The Smell is to bad for a Description... The Man's Cloaths were afterwards so offensive that notwithstanding boiling, they still retaine

You get the same effect when you scrape a knife/fork the wrong way on a plate when eating. Surely this should be control enough, as it's a similar painful sound, without the pain associated with physical discomfort?

The ratings also changed depending on what the listeners thought the sounds were. If they thought a sound came from a musical composition, they rated it as less unpleasant than if they knew it actually was fingernails on a chalkboard. But their skin conductivity changed consistently even when they thought the chalkboard sound was from music and rated it as less unpleasant.

So yes. They discovered that, even when people said they didn't find it as unpleasant (and thought it was supposed to be music), there was still a physical pain-like reaction in the hearers. Some sounds really are painful.

Of course, I would probably find it even more painful if you told me it was from a modern musical composition. Cannot stand that crap (I'm talking the orchestral-style musical crap, not the Britney Spears-style musical crap.)

Some listeners were told the true source of the sounds, whereas others were told that the sounds were part of contemporary musical compositions.

The ratings also changed depending on what the listeners thought the sounds were. If they thought a sound came from a musical composition, they rated it as less unpleasant than if they knew it actually was fingernails on a chalkboard. But their skin conductivity changed consistently even when they thought the chalkboard sound was from music and rated it as less unpleasant.

So naw.. that theory doesn't really hold much water. Personally, I found the chalkboard sound unbearable well before I "knew" I was meant to. More likely it's simply that some folk don't react the same way to that sound (and likely, have their own quirks, completely unrelated). There's a physiological explanation for this which doesn't involve influence, like how some people absolutely can't stand the flavour of gherkin (or pickle, if you prefer), and some love it so much they'll eat my discarded gherkin sl

Also, apologies, I did mean to highlight the second part of that, where their skin consistency changed consistently in either scenario. The part I highlighted agrees with what you said - that there is a cultural attitude that fingernails on a chalkboard is an unpleasant sound. However, this seems to not have any effect on the physiological reaction - that being, the physical reaction is the same in either case.

It would get very tiresome for everyone to have to explain from axioms and first principles every opinion they held, even if they did reflect upon and study them.Alternately, do you think people who agree with you on whatever subject have also been "culturally informed" that way?

I am, of course, not talking about capitalism, communism, chalk, or cottonballs, but wearing socks with sandals.

oooh. people who object to others wearing socks should be forced to obey any whims anybody on the planet might have. the desire to inflict upon others the annoying feeling of sweaty feet just requires some pushback:>

Are you absolutely sure you were never taught that? There are many ways of being taught. Perhaps it was not a conscious lesson, and perhaps it was not even the intent of the lesson. Infants have a tendency to experiment with things that make new sounds. If that new sound is "unpleasant" enough, you can be certain that any nearby adults will exhibit some sort of reaction. That reaction could be irritation, visibly blocking the ears, or even taking away the object that causes the sound. From such a reac

It confirms that the lesson is certainly learnt at some higher (not fully aware) level of mental functioning, but it doesn't go the full way to testing subconscious learned response to stimulus. The moment your mother says EWWW to something while you're in the room as an infant, you'll have a little bit of that EWWW response in you to similar stimulus without realising why.

Fork-scraping never bothered me. Maybe it depends on the fork and plate, but as I recall, it's usually lower frequency. Styrofoam is annoying, but not shiver-inducing like the fingernails on chalkboard thing. Again, I think the frequency is lower most of the time I've encountered the stuff rubbing against itself.

Fork-scraping never bothered me. Maybe it depends on the fork and plate, but as I recall, it's usually lower frequency. Styrofoam is annoying, but not shiver-inducing like the fingernails on chalkboard thing. Again, I think the frequency is lower most of the time I've encountered the stuff rubbing against itself.

My parakeet rather likes squeaky noises made by rubbing styrofoam against various things. This sound can actually get her to start singing or playing with bells. She also likes when I watch basketball, because of the squeaky shoes.

I would say it heavily depends on the plate, or more accurately its glazing. We have a older set in the house that makes a annoying noise if there is the slightest angled contact between the plate and fork.

Meh. I think the article is a bit shallow when talking about "frequency" being the only characteristic of sound. Does a bare high-frequency sine give you the same chills than the chalkboard or plate thing. Not to me. So there's more to it, and I would think the biggest factor of it is knowing or/and seeing where the sound comes from.

The researchers suspect that the shape of the human ear canal may be to blame for the pain. Previous studies have shown that the ear canal amplifies certain frequencies, including those in the range of 2000 to 4000 Hz. A loud screech on a chalkboard could be amplified within our ears to painful effect, the researchers propose.

So, in a sense they did. They didn't prove this is why it is annoying, but it is definitely a possible (and likely) explanation. I personally have noticed those noises appear extremely loud (and hence very annoying.) This may also explain why some people don't find it quite as annoying (as some comments above note): minor variation in ear canal shape would amplify different specific ranges, so certain frequencies could annoy different people more.

The markers give you headaches because they contain a solvent, which is included to make it easier to clean the boards. They're generally based on organic compounds with a low boiling point, so they evaporate quickly, leading to high levels of fumes in the area. When you inhale the fumes they irritate your mucus membranes, leading to a variety of symptoms, including headaches.

They quote some research which compared two sounds, found them similar, and concluded one was the cause of the other.

I used to like this idea, but after reading this again it's bunk. They have a hypothesis but nothing to back it up. I like the ear canal idea better, and that leads us the other way around.

In conclusion, monkey shrieks evolved to match our ear canal design because those who were able to warn others were part of a successful coping strategy. And chalkboards just by chance happen to be simil

Well, guess what most schools still use in the class rooms, at least in Germany... If there was a trend away from chalkboards/blackboards, it would be towards those newish electronic boards running interactive learning/teaching software. But those are expensive so you won't see them too often.

In the US, most schools now use whiteboards. However, they usually are mounted over the old original chalkboards, so I guess technically they are still there. And I remember using a Smartboard back in 04 in my advanced Calc and Trig class. Was actually pretty fun to mess around with.

This was before [the word "blackboard"] was made verboten at the insistence of the PC lobby.

Yeah, right. The fact that the rabid anti-PCers (*) keep repeating this "fact" says more about it sounding plausible to their paranoid minds and its appeal to them (and the more you repeat something the more everyone "knows" it's right) and the fact it's a convenient strawman to use against political correctness. But it says absolutely nothing about whether the story's true or not.

I strongly suspect that this is either outright bullshit, or one overzealous person in a minor case that has been magnified a

There is also the fact that our direction sensing of sound is most sensitive at 2.5KHZ, which also is one of the frequenciesthat we hear very efficiently, I have seen it suggeted due to that region being common in the rustling of leaves and breaking twigs, it was a great asset when avoiding predators in the wild, so we evolved suck sensitivity.

So much so that Robbie McGrath, AC/DC and Simply Red sound engineer once wrote "2.5K is volume"

A great example of some of the difficulties of stating evolutionary theory fairly. You can't say that evolution "designed" something, because evolution is a response to external conditions that affect reproduction. It is a weeding-out process. Thus, you'd have to say something like, "Over millions of years of evolution, some external sound source, whose effect on people whose sensitivity to sound was either narrower or broader than today, and wh

My high school music teacher taught me how to make a stick of chalk squeal on a chalkboard at will.

Hold a fresh piece between your first two fingers and your thumb lightly, with the other end resting against the middle of your palm. hold the tip against the board with a sharp downward angle about the same as a backslash \, and draw a line downward. Don't press too hard or you'll dampen the resonance and get nothing. When you get the hang of it it's very easy to produce a head-splitting screech above 100dB

Fingernails raking against a chalkboard and chalk squeaking against slate were the most unpleasant sounds from a family of recordings, which also included sounds such as Styrofoam squeaks and scraping a plate with a fork.

Oh scraping a plate with a fork.. *shudder*

Also unpleasant: rub the smooth ends of two drills together.

But I have to give kudos to Shad Clark for a sound that is not necessarily cringe-worthy on its own - but by virtue of its associated visual, makes the hairs on my arms stand on end just t

You don't need an audiology experiment to figure this out. Harvey Fletcher and W. A. Munson established the lab work back in 1933, resulting in the Fletcher-Munson Curve [slashdot.org] which illustrates how the sensitivity of the human ear varies at different frequency ranges and volume levels, and is most sensitive in the 2-6kHz range. It's fair to assume this range is more sensitive since it is the hardest range for predators to keep silent while stalking prey, i.e. a twig snapping.

It is believed mankind has pre-historic rodents to thank for their advanced auditory system, which developed during the 65 million year period where mammals and dinosaurs co-existed. During this time there was low oxygen content in the air, so mammals had to maintain high respiratory rates, making them easy prey for the much larger dinosaurs, whose respiratory system involved hollow bones to transport air directly throughout their bodies rather than just lungs to deliver oxygen to the bloodstream. (Birds benefited from the hollow bones to fly, but only use lungs for respiration now that oxygen levels are up.) Mammals had to forage at night and depended almost entirely on their auditory systems for defense. 65 million years of that is likely the only reason we can discern music, much less appreciate it.

As a sound engineer I can attest that the 2-6kHz range is of special significance when putting a mix together. It's usually actually more important that the 2-6kHz range of each voice or instrument be balanced against each other than each voice or instrument be of even frequency response themselves. If something is dominant in that range, it dominates the listener's attention every time. If something has a sharp spike in that range, meaning a very narrow frequency band, it will not be pleasant to the ear. If you check out the frequency response graphs of the cheaper guitar speakers by clicking on the options here [usspeaker.com], you might notice they all have spikes around 2-2.5kHz. That is why they suck.

In a physics class I asked the instructor is there something in our brain that resonates from chalkboard squeals? He thought probably so, kind of like that Tacoma bridge incident. A math teacher used to get excited when the boards were cleaned by custodian, "Yes! We can now break this in" as he would grab a new piece of chalk to use on that dark green board. Then there were some erasers extra wide so not take too long to wipe the board. What about a pocket defense system that blasts high dB levels of this c

I find it interesting that you think 20 year olds don't know what a chalk board is. I'm 27 and currently going to a university in which I have not seen a single dry-erase board. Also, my high school was about 75% chalk and 25% marker.

I can't hear the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. And no, its not because whiteboards are so much more common now. It's also not from too many loud concerts or anything like that; I couldn't hear fingernails on a chalkboard when I was in elementary school, either (I did it once to get my classmates' attention and thought I was doing it wrong since I didn't hear anything).

As a kid nothing could phase me. I'd laugh when someone would try it and I'd see everyone freaking out. But when I turned around 20 several years ago that all changed and I've become super sensitive. It's not even just fingernails on chalk boards that get me, it's a wide assortment of things.

I can not remember which Science Show I was watching at the time but I learned that it was the lower frequencies at least in the early 2000's.

While I'm not sure if they mentioned the specific 2k-4k range, they had broken the noise into low, mid, and high frequencies and did a test with people listening to the noise. While some did flinch at the higher frequencies, most reacted to the lower range.

So unless they took almost a decade to isolate the specific frequency range...is this really new?

It appears that AC is married to someone with a harsh voice. The AC didn't claim that all women, or even all wives, have harsh voices. AC just claimed one person who AC likely spends a lot of time with has a harsh voice.

Although AC could have said "$WIFE_NAME's voice is the only sound more harsh...", that would not have conveyed that AC likely spent a lot of time with that person. For example, if AC had said "Jane's voice is the only sound more harsh...", for all we know 'Jane' could be a checker at the local Walmart and since, presumably, AC doesn't spend that much time with a particular checker at Walmart, the message would have reduced significance.

AC could have used the word spouse instead, but that's rather unnatural and unusual as most people refer to their 'wife' or 'husband' rather than their 'spouse' in normal conversation.

Not all observations or criticisms aimed at anyone but a straight white middle aged able-bodied mail is "racist" or "sexist" or "$GROUPphobic".

How is the AC's comment sexist?
It appears that AC is married to someone with a harsh voice. The AC didn't claim that all women, or even all wives, have harsh voices. AC just claimed one person who AC likely spends a lot of time with has a harsh voice.
Although AC could have said "$WIFE_NAME's voice is the only sound more harsh...", that would not have conveyed that AC likely spent a lot of time with that person. For example, if AC had said "Jane's voice is the only sound more harsh...", for all we know 'Jane' could be a checker at the local Walmart and since, presumably, AC doesn't spend that much time with a particular checker at Walmart, the message would have reduced significance.
AC could have used the word spouse instead, but that's rather unnatural and unusual as most people refer to their 'wife' or 'husband' rather than their 'spouse' in normal conversation.
Not all observations or criticisms aimed at anyone but a straight white middle aged able-bodied mail is "racist" or "sexist" or "$GROUPphobic".

Hmm. This one isn't irrationally hypersensitive and doesn't make unfounded accusations against the character of others.

Clearly this one needs to be re-educated. You must cater to everyone's overly-emotional sensitivities no matter how irrational, psychotic, and baseless. If a bigot cannot be found, you must create one, Comrade!

It appears that AC is married to someone with a harsh voice. The AC didn't claim that all women, or even all wives, have harsh voices. AC just claimed one person who AC likely spends a lot of time with has a harsh voice.

For some reason, it almost always happens to be wives rather than husbands that are referred to as having harsh, screetching voices. Odd that. Heaven forbid anyone suggest this might be due to sexism, though!

It appears that AC is married to someone with a harsh voice. The AC didn't claim that all women, or even all wives, have harsh voices. AC just claimed one person who AC likely spends a lot of time with has a harsh voice.

For some reason, it almost always happens to be wives rather than husbands that are referred to as having harsh, screetching voices. Odd that. Heaven forbid anyone suggest this might be due to sexism, though!

The human male voice tends to be deeper than the female voice. This has to do with physiology. So referring to husbands as having shrill irritating voices does not ring true. Stereotypes tend to take a truth and exaggerate it - the truth makes it recognisable. Heaven forbid reality get in the way of political correctness.

There are plenty of anti-male stereotypes - just watch an episode of an American sitcom like say Everybody Loves Raymond for example. He's obtuse, lazy and incompetent. His wife is whiny ov

The OP posted that his wife's voice is harsher than fingernails on a chalkboard. I don't like the voices of Rosanne Barr, Gilbert Gottfried, or Fran Drescher, but I wouldn't call them harsher than fingernails on a chalkboard.

So, AC posts a comment disparaging his wife and exaggerating a possible negative characteristics of hers (if she even actually exists). I don't mean to imply that AC is lying about being married, but this is clearly a joke, and jokes don't need to be true to be told. (I've told a "two s

[My wife's voice] Is the only sound that is more harsh than fingernails on a chalkboard.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sexism...

Too bad I posted so I cannot mod you down. C'est la vie. I'd rather try to reason with you anyway.

I guess we're all just a bunch of nasty, brutish men who hate women and want to keep them down. When in doubt, and there is no evidence at all either for or against any sort of bigotry, simply interpret everything this way. Right? Seriously, if that's your perception, it would make you the sexist.